Kisses
by dharmamonkey
Summary: For seven years, all I had was the memory of each kiss we shared, and because that's all I had to hold onto during those years, I remembered every time I kissed her.
1. Chapter 1

**Kisses**

* * *

><p><strong>By<strong>: dharmamonkey  
><strong>Rated<strong>: M  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: _I don't own jack. However, I am definitely interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply._

**A/N:** _I was posting screen caps of B&B kisses on Twitter when it occurred to me that the kisses themselves are milemarkers along the road for Brennan and Booth, and so I decided to write a fic about those kisses. This is the first installment, about the first kiss. After the kiss on the steps of the Hoover, this fic will journey into speculative territory, taking us where we know they went but where we never saw them go on-screen. _

_Rated M, but I expect this will be very light M compared to the things I usually write. But you'd have to be kind of silly to think that a fic called "Kisses" was going to be all K-rated and innocent._

* * *

><p>For years, all I had was the memory of each kiss we shared, and because that's all I had to hold onto during those years, I remembered every time I kissed her.<p>

* * *

><p>I remembered that kiss—our very first—that we shared on the back stoop of the old pool bar I used to frequent. We had been working a case together, the first time I had ever actively sought out a squint's help on a case, and it was obvious from the beginning that there was something there, something more than professional compatibility. I knew it from the very first moment I saw her, standing at the front of that lecture hall at American University, brimming with confidence as she spoke to the class, looking drop-dead gorgeous in that skirt with those legs of hers that just seemed to go on and on.<p>

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked her.

"Absolutely not," she replied. "Ludicrous."

As we worked the case, moving it forward by leaps and bounds in ways that I had not been able to on my own, we realized that, despite our differences, we really enjoyed one another's company. We were walking through the opera house one afternoon, trying to locate the probable scene of the crime, and she asked me if I was seeing anyone, which I wasn't. I asked her the same, and she indicated that she was not.

"I'd ask you out if I could," I said.

"Why can't you?" she countered with that wry smile of hers I'd come to adore.

I explained the FBI's non-fraternization policy—which, as it turns out, was not quite as draconian as I had originally believed, but that's all water under the dam now—and was pleased when she replied, "That's too bad." Because she was everything I ever wanted, in a package I never expected to find it in: smart, funny, confident, honest, strong, and hot—really, really hot.

The Assistant U.S. Attorney ordered me to fire her and the Jeffersonian after she had punched Judge Hasty in the nose—twice, actually, and I'd be lying if I told you I didn't get half-hard after watching her sock him in the face with that spring-loaded right arm of hers—and so I took her out for drinks after work one evening. We went to the bar where I'd play pool, because I knew the bartender pretty well and, besides, I knew there was no way I'd run into anybody from the FBI or, hell, from the Jeffersonian there.

Four shots of tequila after we'd started, I told her she was fired. She did a doubletake, confused by what I had done. "What? Why?" Her cluelessness about the _realpolitik _of federal law enforcement was amusing and adorable. "You're fired because you assaulted a federal judge," I explained. "No," she said, "you thought that was hot." Which of course, I did, but it didn't change the fact that I'd been forced to fire her and had no choice in the matter. What happened next, though, was a surprise.

She leaned in close to me and in a husky voice said, "If we don't work together anymore, we can have sex." I nearly fell off my barstool, then went to call a cab. We left the bar and went out back where the cab was going to pick us up. And that's where it happened.

Like any great first kiss, it wasn't clear who made the first move to close the distance between us, but one moment I had said, "I feel like I'm gonna kiss you," and the next moment our mouths were melded together, our lips grasping at one another as our tongues sought one another out in the warm, wet space between us. She tasted amazing, and I couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to devour her. It wasn't so much a matter of me kissing her, or her kissing me—the space between us had closed to the point that it was no longer clear who was serving and who was returning—but it was clear that in that kiss, in the breathless grasping of one mouth for another, we each had found something we wanted to hold onto. I felt it in the way she held the sleeve of my jacket and tugged on my lapel to pull me in closer, and in the way she returned each of my grasping kisses with one of her own.

Then, the taxi driver honked his horn again and she pulled away, our lips separating for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime.

She turned away and ran towards the cab, turning back with a sly grin on her face and said, "We are not spending the night together."

My mind was spinning, my blood running hot after sharing the most amazing, knee-meltingly intense kiss of my life, and her words took a moment to soak into my addled brain. "Of course we are—why?"

"Tequila," she said, then ducked into that cab.

That kiss wasn't about the tequila, and her ducking into that cab wasn't about the tequila, either. I know that now. When she kissed me, she felt something, something in the energy between us that triggered something in her, and it frightened her. While I knew, that moment I met her at American—and confirmed in the surge of love and desire I felt as our mouths met in that kiss—that there was something amazing and life-changing about her that I didn't want to let go, I think that in that kiss, she felt herself losing control, abandoning herself to the experience and the surge of emotion, and it scared the daylights out of her.

She walked off that stoop and out into the rain to catch that cab ride home, and she did it because the alternative—continuing that kiss, and coming home with me that night—would have rocked her off her foundation more than she was prepared to face.

Although I did everything I could not to show it, as I watched the cab pull away in the rain and saw her wave at me through the cab's rear window, I was both disappointed and hopeful. I knew that our story was not over, and when I looked over my shoulder at the buzzing, flickering "POOL" sign over the bar's rear awning, I knew I had stumbled upon the only bet worth gambling my life on.

Little did I know that it would take seven years for that bet to pay off.

_To be continued..._

* * *

><p><em>Please don't read and run.<br>Leave a review, dammit!  
>Good, bad, indifferent or insulting.<br>Any review is better than no review._

_Thanks!  
><em>


	2. Chapter 2

**Kisses**

* * *

><p><strong>By<strong>: dharmamonkey  
><strong>Rated<strong>: M  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: _I don't own jack. However, I am definitely interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply._

**A/N:** _I was posting screen caps of B&B kisses on Twitter when it occurred to me that the kisses themselves are milemarkers along the road for Brennan and Booth, and so I decided to write a fic about those kisses. After the kiss on the steps of the Hoover, this fic will journey into speculative territory, taking us where we know they went but where we never saw them go on-screen. _

_Rated M, but I expect this will be very light M compared to the things I usually write. But you'd have to be kind of silly to think that a fic called "Kisses" was going to be all K-rated and innocent._

_This chapter brings us to their second shared kiss._

* * *

><p>For years, all I had was the memory of each kiss we shared, and because that's all I had to hold onto during those years, I remembered every time I kissed her.<p>

* * *

><p>More than three and a half years passed between the night I first felt her lips touch mine and the second time our lips met in a kiss.<p>

A lot had happened between us in those three and a half years, one of which we spent estranged from one another after our first case, when she was so furious at me she refused to work with me ever again and had her assistant screen my calls. Finally, after a year—a year during which not a single day passed that I did not think of her or that knee-meltingly passsionate kiss we shared on the back stoop of my old pool bar—I finagled a way to see her again by asking the Department of Homeland Security to hold her for questioning at Customs as she made entry at Dulles on her way back from excavating a mass grave in Guatemala. It was sneaky, I admit it, but I needed her help on a case and—to be perfectly honest—I was willing to do almost anything to work with her again. She was livid once I pulled her from that interview room at Dulles, and I tried to soothe her with a full measure of my charm and wit, but to no avail. She walked away again, but this time I pleaded with her to stop.

"What's it going to take?" I asked her.

I needed her help professionally and, on a personal level, desperately wanted to work with her again—to be near her again, to be challenged by her again. I still believed, even after a year of having every one of my attempts at contact stonewalled by her assistant, that there was something cosmic connecting us. She stalked across the brick pavers with a fierce, unstoppable momentum, and I was sure I had lost her again. Then, suddenly, she turned on her heel to face me.

"Full participation in the case," she said, her eyes narrowed and her jaw hard with determination.

I couldn't believe it, and while I was not exactly sure what exactly her offer would entail, I knew I would pay almost any price to work with her again.

"Fine," I said.

"Not just lab work, everything," she said, leveling her pale green eyes at me with a piercing glare. She did not realize that she had already won.

"What?" I asked. "Do you want me to spit in my hand? We're Scully and Mulder."

"I don't know what that means," she said. I smirked inwardly. _Of course you don't._ The depth of her cluelessness when it came to pop culture was one of the qualities that I found most endearing about her, even in the short time we had worked together a year earlier.

"It's an olive branch," I told her. "Just get back in the car."

And she did.

Two and half years later, we were still working together as partners, and with her assistance I was clearing a higher percentage of homicide cases than any Special Agent anywhere in the country—over ninety-five percent. We made an amazing team, her and I, and despite our widely different educational backgrounds and the very different ways in which we viewed the world, we became very close—best friends, really. And try as I did in that first year or two to erect a wall within myself to contain the growing wave of feelings I had for her, it became clear by the beginning of the third year of our partnership that I had fallen in love with her. But, as foolish as it may sound now, I felt then that I loved her too much, and needed her too much, to risk losing her by revealing those feelings to her.

So I loved her quietly, and drew every ounce of emotional satisfaction I could from our friendship, knowing that it was not enough to feed the hunger I had for her. Nerve-wracking and heart-rending though it was for me, I knew that what she needed then was not a lover, but a friend, and so I invested everything I could in being that friend, and in so doing perhaps erode, day by day, month by month, the walls that she had built up over the years—walls behind which I knew, going back to the earliest days after we first met back in 2004, was a woman of great empathy and compassion.

More than anything else, our partnership, our friendship and her willingness to trust and feel was challenged and strengthened by the ordeal involving her family. We had only been partners a few months when, over the Christmas holiday after we were trapped in the lab because some of the squints released a fungus while handling a body, I learned that she had been abandoned by her parents as a teenager. They had disappeared just before Christmas, leaving her and her brother behind. Her brother, who was several years older, later left her behind, too, and she was put into the Illinois foster care system, where she endured years of neglect and abuse before aging out of the system. That spring, she discovered that one of the thousands of skeletons stored in Limbo—pardon me, the Jeffersonian's Modular Bone Storage facility—was, in fact, her mother. We opened a federal case and were able to identify her mother's killer, and in so doing drew both her brother and her father out of a decade and a half of hiding and silence.

Complicated though it was by her parents' storied past as bank robbers, her father's time as a hitman, her brother's history of misdemeanors and minor felonies, and the small matter of her father offing an ex-FBI agent and the Deputy Director of the FBI, over the course of those two and a half years, and with a certain amount of encouragement from yours truly, she began to reestablish relationships with her father and brother. I watched her evolve before my very eyes, every week, every month becoming more and more willing to express the empathy and compassion I always knew she felt for others. Her brother skipped town after helping her father escape arrest, violating the terms of his parole in the process and thus became a wanted fugitive. When her brother's wife came to visit her after his youngest stepdaughter's cystic fibrosis turn a bad turn for the worse, she went to see her father to ask him to contact her brother so he could see his ailing stepdaughter who was by then in intensive care. She did this despite the fact that her feelings for her father, and her feelings about the killings he had committed, were very much still ambiguous and unresolved. But she went to see her father because she knew that sick little girl in that hospital needed her stepfather.

For reasons I still don't completely understand, her brother showed up at the Hoover, which forced my hand—I had no choice but to arrest him. As I cuffed him, he begged me to let him see his stepdaughter. I hesitated, then looked over at her. She said nothing, but I saw a pleading flicker behind her eyes, and I knew I had to do this for her, even though in so doing I risked my career. It was not the first time, and it was by no means the last time that I was willing to lose it all for her.

We were standing there in the doorway of her brother's stepdaughter's hospital room, watching as the sick little girl lit up at the sight of him. I could feel the tension fade from her shoulders as she stood there next to me, and I knew I had done the right thing.

"Thank you, Booth," she said softly.

"Oh, this never happened," I said to her. "Don't thank me. As far as the Bureau is concerned, I caught him here, fifteen minutes from now."

And then, out of the blue, she leaned close to me, lifted her head, and pressed her lips to my cheek. It was a quick peck on the cheek, I know, but I had longed for the touch of her lips for so long that when I felt her soft warm lips touch my cheek, I felt a surge of electricity crackle up my spine and down into my legs, my cheeks flashed hot and I became so lightheaded, I nearly fainted. I felt myself suck in a deep breath as I tried to regain my composure. The woman I had started working with two and half years earlier would never have done that—not to me, and not to anyone—and that she had seemingly emerged from her shell, and reached out with that kind of an expression of warmth to me, filled me with a feeling of gratitude and love that I can't even today properly express in words. That tiny gesture, silly as it may sound, told me that she knew what I had done for her, what I had risked for her, and gave me hope that perhaps she felt something for me, despite the passage of years between that first kiss and that moment in the hospital.

And so that tiny little kiss on the cheek sent me reeling.

Perhaps there was something cosmic about bringing her and her family together that brought us closer together, because just a few weeks later, with Christmas approaching and both her father and brother still incarcerated, Caroline Julian, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, agreed to arrange for her family to celebrate the holiday in one of the prison's conjugal trailers on one condition: that the two of us kiss, on the lips, under a sprig of mistletoe in her office. When she told me, I objected, not because I didn't want to kiss her, but I suppose because part of me was concerned that kissing her again would open a Pandora's box of feelings on my part that I wasn't sure my partner was ready to handle, and that would only be harder to suppress again once unleashed.

"It's the only way she'll make Christmas for my family," she explained.

"What?" I blurted. "By having us kiss?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Why?"

"Because she's feeling puckish."

"Puckish?" I asked. "What's that mean?"

She furrowed her brow and shot me a look. "Listen, Booth! She's going to be here any second." Glancing towards the door to her office, she asked, "Do you want some gum?"

_So practical, _I thought, then a wave of panic passed through me.

"No, my breath is just fine," I said.

My mind was buzzing with conflicting thoughts—part of me jumping at the chance to feel her touch me so intimately again, and another part of me recoiling at the idea for fear that neither of us was ready to face that kind of intimacy. And, perhaps, there was also a part of me that feared that, in kissing her, I might discover that the feelings I thought she might have for me were, in fact, illusory and unreciprocated. There was no way I was going to let this crazy plan of Caroline's go forward. It was too much—too much for me, and God only knows, too much for her. It was insanity.

"Alright—look," I said. "I'll have a talk with Caroline."

"No," she said firmly, taking a step forward. My heart jumped in my chest.

"No?" I asked, flabbergasted at her response, which I could only imagine that meant one thing: she actually, really, genuinely wanted to kiss me. _Wow._ I felt that same familiar crackle of electricity tingle up my spine at the thought of it—at the thought that she actually wanted to kiss me again.

"I'm only telling you out of professional courtesy," she said, dampening the mood for a brief moment in her uniquely squinty way. But then again, I adored her squintiness. I always had, from the very first moments I laid eyes on her.

Caroline came in a few seconds later, and before I knew what had happened, I'd been shoved under the mistletoe, my face mere inches away from my gorgeous, brilliant, adorable partner's warm, slim lips. And with the Assistant U.S. Attorney standing just a few feet away, watching us, she looked at me with wide eyes full of anticipation and pulled me close. Our lips met and did not part for several seconds. At first I held back, unsure of how far she wanted to take this, but as our mouths came together and that wonderful, intimate space opened between them, I knew she felt _something _that came through in that kiss_. _Although masked by the minty flavor of the gum she had been chewing—which, along with her warm, wonderful tongue, ended up in my mouth—I could taste her, and the sensation of it, her lips on mine, and her tongue sliding between my teeth and touching mine, drove me nearly insane with long-suppressed want. My heart pounded in my chest and I felt the blood rush out of my head and come to rest below my navel, and it was everything I could do not to get hard standing there in front of her and the federal prosecutor who was watching us. Our mouths still fused together, she grabbed me by the lapels of my wool coat and pulled me even closer before, our lightheadedness getting the best of us both, we broke apart, each of us breathless as we gasped for air. Just as they had after our first kiss some three and a half years earlier, my knees nearly betrayed me as I stepped back with a wobbly gait.

She said something about steamboats but I didn't really quite catch it, my brain was so clouded with arousal, affection, excitement and uncertainty. Somehow, by some miracle I suppose, I managed to string a few words together that formed a complete sentence.

"I don't know what that means," I said, "but, um, Merry Christmas."

After Caroline left, it was clear that I was not the only one whose brain was completely addled by the experience of that kiss. For a couple of moments, we weren't able to look at one another straight in the eye, so rattled were we each by what had just transpired between us—because, while neither of us would have been prepared to admit it at the time, that kiss was more than just a kiss, and each of us poured more into that kiss, and soaked up more from it, than the few seconds it lasted would have led either of us to think possible.

I still couldn't think straight when I walked out of her office after having mumbled some nonsense about getting back to the Hoover to see if the forensic guys there had uncovered anything on the suspect's clothes. The one thought I was able to cobble together as I rolled the gum between my teeth on my way out of the lab was that I knew that this was one Christmas I would remember for the rest of my life.

And, judging by the way she kissed me, and the way she looked at me as our lips parted that afternoon, I knew she would, too.

* * *

><p><em>To be continued…<em>

* * *

><p><em>Please don't read and run.<br>Leave a review, dammit!  
>Good, bad, indifferent or insulting.<br>Any review is better than no review._

_Thanks!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Kisses**

* * *

><p><strong>By<strong>: dharmamonkey  
><strong>Rated<strong>: M  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: _I don't own jack. However, I am definitely interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply._

**A/N:** _I was posting screen caps of B&B kisses on Twitter when it occurred to me that the kisses themselves are milemarkers along the road for Brennan and Booth, and so I decided to write a fic about those kisses. After the kiss on the steps of the Hoover, this fic will journey into speculative territory, taking us where we know they went but where we never saw them go on-screen. _

_Rated M, but I expect this will be very light M compared to the things I usually write. But you'd have to be kind of silly to think that a fic called "Kisses" was going to be all K-rated and innocent._

_This chapter brings us to their third shared kiss._

* * *

><p>For years, all I had was the memory of each kiss we shared, and because that's all I had to hold onto during those years, I remembered every time I kissed her.<p>

* * *

><p>I wouldn't go as far as to say it was a sucker's bet, but there's no doubt that I did what any gambler would do when I looked at the odds. I talked myself out of any consideration of the odds, and thought only of the payoff.<p>

There's nothing rational about gambling, of course. If you gave it any thought, any real, rational thought, you'd probably walk away from the table or slot machine before you ever put your money at risk. If you sat there and thought about the actual odds of winning, whether you're talking about 4-to-1 odds or 500-to-1 odds, you would probably think of better ways to spend your money, given the overwhelming odds of losing the bet. But the flashing lights, the intermittent sound of buzzing and bells from the slot machines signaling a win, the unceasing flow of cheap drinks, the sensuous feel of the wood-trimmed, green felt card tables, the clacking sound of billiards balls, the sound of the dealer calling out "That's craps!"—it's all designed to get the gambler to surrender to the feeling of the moment, to let go of the part of your brain that asks, "Why do you think you're different? Why do you think you'll win where so many others have laid down their bets and lost?" Instead, a swirling surge of hope, confidence and enthusiasm bubbles of up inside of you, crowding doubt into a quiet corner, propelling you towards one thing: the wager.

We went to Sweets' office that day to talk to him about the manuscript of the book he wrote about us. He didn't know about the first case we worked together, the Gemma Arrington case. Sweets had no idea that the tremendous attraction that crackled between us as we worked the Cleo Eller case was in fact the rekindling of a flame that had been lit off between us more than a year earlier. He did not know about that first kiss we shared on the back stoop of my old pool bar in the rain, the night I'd fired her. He did not know how that kiss seared us deeply, or that the way each of us related to one another in the first four and half years of our partnership was in no small part a reaction to the feelings that flickered between us in the moments during and immediately after that amazing first kiss.

So we told him. We told him almost everything.

Sweets was convinced that we were suppressing our real feelings towards one another, and while his book made it clear that we worked extremely well together despite it, he wanted us to face our feelings and clear the air between us.

"Okay," he said to us. "You are totally messed up. I always said that you could never kiss, because if you did, then the dam would break and now it turns out that you kissed. Did the dam break?"

My eye twitched reflexively at the question and I glanced over at her.

"Wha—what does that mean?" she stammered.

"Well," I said, a knot forming in my stomach. "He still thinks that we slept together," I explained.

I did not want to have this conversation, because my own feelings were painfully raw. For five and a half years I had smoldered for her and fantasized about what it would be like to be with her, to make love to her, to show her with my hands, my mouth and my body how much I loved her. Every fiber of my being wanted to make love to her, and had for many years. I felt a tingle at the base of my spine as the thought of making love to her flashed through my mind.

"We're not in love with each other," she said. I blanched at her words, and I saw something—a twitch or a flicker—in Sweets' eyes as he registered my response. She looked over at me and said, "It took us a year, after we kissed, to be in the same room together, right?"

Was she compartmentalizing? Did she truly feel nothing for me, after all this time? What about the way she kissed my cheek that evening in the doorway of Hayley's hospital room, early in the third year of our partnership? What about the kiss we shared under the mistletoe later that same year? Did she truly believe we really were "just partners," or was there something deep down inside of her that resonated with feeling for me, even if she did not have the confidence or experience to give a name to those feelings?

"Oh, uh, absolutely," I said quickly. "Right. No more kissing or anything."

Sweets leaned his head to the side and stared at us, his brown eyes drilling into each of us in that creepy, shrinky way I had seen him use dozens of times with suspects or witnesses when he tried to tease out the truth from their lies.

"If you're not in love," he said, "then how come you haven't been in any serious relationships since you first met, huh?"

She blinked but gave no indication that she was uncomfortable with the question. "I don't really do that," she said.

I knew the answer, but could not bring myself to give voice to the way I felt in this venue, in front of a young FBI shrink. So I bluffed.

"You know, a job," I said. "Son."

Sweets narrowed his eyes, and I knew my bluff had failed as far as he was concerned. Several moments of silence passed between the three of us before he spoke.

"One of you has to have the courage to break this stalemate," he said. He turned to me and pointed at me. "You. It's gotta be you because you're the gambler."

The gambler.

"_I have a gambling problem," I'd confessed to her on the steps of that old bar. "But I'm dealing with it."_

"_You __can__'__t __be __here,__ Booth,__" __she__'__d __said __to __me __after __she __watched __my __face __pale __as__ we __walked __across __the__ casino__'__s __gaming __floor.__ "__You__'__re__ a __degenerate__ gambler.__" __I __had __waved __off __her __comment.__ "__Former __gambler, __okay? __Not__ degenerate, __I__ been __through__ the __program, __okay.__" __And __so __I __had._

But like they say, once an addict, always an addict. When you've gambled the way I have—when you've won and lost the way I have—the thirst for the thrill of the wager never, ever really leaves you. Sweets knew that. He read the raw vulnerability on my face that evening and he knew what I would do.

"For once, make that work for you," he told me.

I felt the familiar lightheadedness, the swirling sensation in my gut not unlike the feelings that had crept up on me as we walked across the gaming floor that afternoon three years earlier. To accept this wager, I'd have to go all-in, with everything I had, but the payoff—having her, and finally being able to give my love to her after spending so many years loving her in painful silence—was so incredible, I was helpless to resist it.

We stood there on the steps behind the Hoover, each of us in a trenchcoat to insulate against the cool, damp night. She wore that same white, hip-length coat that she wore the night behind the old pool bar. After spending hours in Sweets' office, telling the story of our very first case, there was a certain softness and vulnerability on her face that tugged at something deep in my chest.

On the wall behind us was inscribed a quote from Carl Sandburg: "Nothing happens unless first a dream."

My heart was raw, pounding in my chest as I looked at her face, and my mind was spinning. I could hear Gordon Wyatt's words to me that night I came to see him in his restaurant, the night before my pistol requalification test.

_"Temperance Brennan," he told me, leaning his big head and shoulders over the small table in the middle of his kitchen. "You're in love with her."_

_"We're not compatible," I had told him. "She sees the world one way, I see it the other way."_

_"No, of course," he agreed. "It's absolutely ludicrous, the idea of you together, but the heart chooses what it chooses, doesn't it? We don't really have any say in the matter."_

I knew, standing on the steps behind the Hoover that night, that Gordon Gordon had been right. Of course, I loved her. I had for years. I loved her more than I had any other woman I had ever known. Yet I had never broken my silence, and after spending the last several hours recounting for Sweets that very first case, and facing again the feelings I had felt for her from the very beginning, from the very moment I first laid eyes on her in that lecture hall at American, I knew. I knew that I loved her, and that I had always loved her, from that very first morning. I knew.

I stopped walking and stood there, the Washington Monument looming large in the distance. I felt my eyes water a little as the feeling washed over me. I had to tell her.

"I'm the gambler," I told her. "I believe in giving this a chance."

In that single moment, filled with a profound swirl of hope, love and fear, I stepped toward her. Her pale eyes were wide with surprise and curiosity. I loved her eyes, the cool intensity of them, the way they saw through me and, though she would never have admitted it, saw the truth of me, who I was, and who I wanted to be. No one knew me the way she did. She knew me—she knew my soul, my heart, the way no other human being did, and that closeness, that friendship, I felt between us filled me with hope that we could be more, have more, than what we had already. I wanted it. I wanted _all_ of it. I wanted her. I wanted all in.

"Look," I said to her. "I wanna give this a shot."

Her pale skin glowed under the moonlight, and I saw something flicker behind her light green eyes.

"You mean us?" she asked.

I nodded.

"No," she said. "The FBI won't let us work together as a couple—"

"Don't do that," I said, my words catching in my throat as a surge of warmth washed over me. "That is no reason why we—"

There were no words to express how I felt at that moment. So I kissed her.

I leaned in close to her and kissed her hard, covering her soft, warm lips with mine as my blood roared in my ears. I felt her top lip, so soft and tender, quiver a little as I held it gently between my lips and in that moment, feeling that tiny movement, I wanted so badly for her to open her mouth, to feel the sweet warmth of her tongue again. As I I felt her lips move against mine, I knew she felt something, and for a few very brief moments, I thought that she felt for me what I felt for her. Then the quivering of her top lip between mine stopped. She hesitated, then her lips moved again before she put her hands on my chest and pushed me away.

"No, no," she cried.

"Why?" I asked. "Why?"

Her eyes glistened with tears. "You—you thought you were protecting me," she said in a broken voice, "but you're the one who needs protecting."

"Protecting from what?" I asked, my heart pounding as I felt the muscles of my chest and shoulders tense. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"From me!" she said, a tear falling from her eye, smudging her eyeliner and dribbling down her ivory cheek. "I—I don't have your kind of open heart," she said.

My heart refused to believe what my ears had just heard. She was my everything—couldn't she see how much I loved her? How perfectly we complemented one another? How cosmic and miraculous it was that we had built what we had—this amazing friendship and partnership of ours—even though we were so different? Though my feet were firmly planted on the stone of that plaza, I felt as if I stood over a trapdoor that was about to open beneath me.

"Just give it a chance," I begged her. "That's all I'm asking."

"No," she insisted, her voice uneven and wracked with the tears that began to fall from her eyes. "You said it yourself; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome."

I felt my heart breaking as the words left her mouth.

"Well, then let's go for a different outcome here, alright?" I held her upper arms in my hands, gently but firmly enough that the pads of my fingertips felt her stiffen under them. "Let's just - hear me out, alright? You know when you talk to older couples who, you know, have been in love for 30 or 40 or 50 years, alright, it's always the guy who says 'I knew.'"

She looked at me, another tear dropping onto her cheek.

"I knew," I said. "Right from the beginning."

But, no matter what I said, she would not have it. She would not have me. I had gone all in, with everything I had inside of me, laying out my cards in front of her, but she did not want my love.

My eyes burned with tears as I sat down on the step, having been rejected by the woman I loved more than any other, by the woman I had loved for five and a half years. As I wiped the tears from my eyes, the side of my hand brushed against my lip and I wondered if I would ever feel her lips touch mine again. Though she had rejected me, I knew that she had not rejected me because she did not love me. I think I knew, even then, even that night as my heart was torn from my chest, that she _did_ love me, but that she was terrified, that she did not know how to deal with the way she felt about me. Just as she had fled into that rainy night six and a half years before, so did she flee in a way that night behind the Hoover.

I told her I had to move on, but I think even then a part of me knew I never would. That I never could move on from her.

The same part of me that dismissed the odds as I leaned over the green felt of the blackjack table dismissed the overwhelming signs that she would never have me the way I wanted her to have me. The gambler always thinks the big win—the odds-defying big score—is always one wager away. And so, while I moved on, or tried to anyway, somewhere inside of me, I never let go of the hope that someday she would find a way to love me.

Because, no matter what, I never really stopped loving her.

* * *

><p><em>To be continued…<em>

* * *

><p><em>Please don't read and run.<br>Leave a review, dammit!  
>Good, bad, indifferent or insulting.<br>Any review is better than no review._

_Thanks!_


	4. Chapter 4

**Kisses**

* * *

><p><strong>By<strong>: dharmamonkey  
><strong>Rated<strong>: M  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: _I don't own jack. However, I am definitely interested in renting Booth. A five-hour minimum would apply._

**A/N:** _I__ was __posting __screen__caps __of __B&B__ kisses __on __Twitter __when __it __occurred __to __me__ that __the __kisses __themselves __are __milemarkers __along __the__ road __for __Brennan __and__ Booth, __and__ so __I__ decided __to __write __a __fic__ about __those __kisses._

_My __muse __was __eager __today,__ so __I __can __give __you __two __updates __in__ one __day__ (since __I __beat __the__ chimes __at __midnight)__…_

_This chapter, which shows us the kiss(es) we never saw on screen but know happened, deserves the M rating._

* * *

><p>For years, all I had was the memory of each kiss we shared, and because that's all I had to hold onto during those years, I remembered every time I kissed her.<p>

* * *

><p>I awoke to the sound of my bedroom door being opened.<p>

To be honest, I was not exactly asleep when the silhouette appeared in my doorway, but I was caught by surprise, and as a simple matter of reflex I rolled over, grabbed my service pistol off my nightstand and, bringing the front sight in line with the notch on the rear of the pistol, I drew a bead on the figure in the doorway.

She stood there in the half-light, her hands up and her face drawn, clad in an old FBI sweatshirt of mine and a pair of my old sweatpants. As my mind caught up to my reflexes, I realized that my partner was on the other end of my gunsights, staring down the barrel of my Glock 23.

"You want me to put away the gun?" I asked her, my voice low and gravelly, my heart pounding and the muscles of my arms twitching as I slowly lowered my pistol.

"Yes," she said breathlessly.

She came to me, broken by the events of that day, and though I am not sure that anything I could have told her would lessen the pain she felt at the loss of her beloved protégé, Vincent, I took comfort in knowing that I was able to be there for her, that she did not have to face the night alone in the wake of such a loss. But it was more than that. I did not want to be alone that night. Although it was hardly the first time I had felt a man's blood pulse over my fingers as he drew his dying breath, I felt my world nearly collapse around me and grow very, very small as the light behind Vincent's eyes flickered and faded. I knew that, were it not for the fact that he had been standing next to me when that cell phone rang, I would have handed that phone to her, and Broadsky's bullet would have struck her down, and I would have lost her. The knowledge of it, and the recognition that I was, in fact, grateful that the bullet had pierced Vincent's chest and not hers, filled me with a strange and painful swirl of emotions that I was not prepared to face alone that night. I know she recognized the same bitter irony, that were it not for the fact that Vincent had answered Broadsky's call and been felled by that bullet, it would have been me laying on that floor, my blood pulsing out of me with each heartbeat, a pool of crimson spreading beneath me as my eyes turned glassy and dark.

So, having no words that I could offer to help her make sense of what had happened that morning, I fell back on my pillow and held her in my arms, her head resting against my shoulder, her hand curled against my chest. I felt her sobs as each one shook her body, and I wanted more than anything to take away her pain. So I held her, close against my chest, as she cried, her tears soaking through my shirt until I could feel them, warm and slippery, against my skin. With each sob, I felt her forehead roll against my cheek, and my nostrils filled with the smell of her, a smell that, after nearly six years of working with her and almost seven of knowing her, I knew nearly as well as my own. Her sobs faded into soft hiccups, and then her breaths finally began to come slowly and evenly, her chest rising and falling in sync with my own breaths. When she finally fell still, I lowered my chin and kissed her forehead, the skin as soft as a child's and as smooth as porcelain.

And in that moment, I remembered what I had always known: that I loved her, and that, no matter what happened around us, no matter what happened between us, I always would.

I held her, for moments, minutes—how long, I don't know—before she stirred again. She shifted in my arms and I felt her head move against my jaw. I looked down at her, and into her beautifully pale green eyes, rimmed as they were with red from the countless tears she had shed that night. She blinked, and one last tear rolled down her cheek as she held her lips together and swallowed.

"Bones," I whispered.

She pulled away, then lifted her head and brushed her lips against mine. Our lips touched but for a moment, hardly even touching at all, but in that gesture I knew that she was ready—ready to give up whatever tiny thread of imperviousness she had left after all that we had been through that day, and over the nearly seven years that preceded it—and I knew that I was no longer angry, the last of my anger having fled as Vincent's blood pulsed and dribbled over my hands as he died beneath them.

"Booth," she whispered back.

Again our lips met, but this time with less tentativeness. Her lips came to meet mine and I felt her tongue slide across my lower lip as I opened my mouth to her. I heard a low, soft moan—I am not sure if it was hers or mine, to be honest—as her tongue lolled across my teeth and met mine. A tidal wave of warmth, love and desire flooded over me as her mouth grasped at mine, and mine at hers, the sweet taste of her setting my senses on fire as every one of my nerve endings crackled with want. I rolled her gently so she lay on top of me, and I cupped my hands on her delicate square jaw as I kissed her. I felt a tingle at the base of my spine and a tugging sensation low in my gut as I felt her weight on my hips.

She groaned and kissed me back, each grasping kiss that passed between us more desperate than the last. When I ran out of breath, I pulled away but held her beautiful face still in my hands as we looked in each other's eyes, our chests heaving for want of breath and, without a doubt, in plain want.

"Booth, I—" she began to say, her voice trailing off as she kissed me again. Her fingers ran over my chest and then under my T-shirt, and the sensation of her light, gentle touch on my belly made me shudder. I kissed her back, then pulled away again, holding her lower lip between mine before our mouths separated again.

"Bones," I moaned as she dragged her thumb across my navel and her fingertips toyed with the drawstring of my sweats. "I—are you sure?" I asked as I felt her forearm brush against my erection.

"Yes," she whispered, her fingers sliding under the waistband of my sweats as I shivered at her touch.

Seven years I spent dreaming of what it would be like to make love to her. But the reality of it was more amazing than I possibly could have imagined, and that night, as I moved inside of her, I felt as if all of the pain and yearning of the last seven years was somehow worth it. I watched her face as I rocked in and out of her, her pale green eyes turned dark, nearly teal, with passion, and her mouth opened, a long, low groan sounding from deep in her throat as her release washed over her. I pressed into her once more as I followed her, and our lips met again. She held my jaw between her slender hands and kissed me deeply, her tongue twirling in my mouth and rolling across mine as I emptied myself into her.

Neither of us spoke to the other that morning of the love we felt for each other, but between the grasping, sweet kisses we shared and the beautiful love we made that morning, words were not necessary. In fact, at that moment, after all the words that had passed between us over the seven years since we first kissed in the rain behind my old pool bar, there was nothing left to say. Everything we needed to tell one another about love and life we said without a single word.

And so it was that, when we parted that morning as I dropped her off at the lab, we did not say "goodbye" or "I love you" or even "be careful" to one another. Our lips met once again in a soft, patient, tender kiss, one that said without words all those words, and maybe a few more that perhaps neither of us was quite ready to say.

That kiss hung on my lips every second of that day as I stalked a killer between empty shipping containers behind the scope of a rifle. That kiss sustained me as I stood over a wounded man, my bullet lodged in his knee as he howled in agony.

That kiss reminded me of the only thing that was pure and constant in my life—my love for her.

* * *

><p><em>To be continued…<em>

* * *

><p><em>Please don't read and run.<br>Leave a review, dammit!  
>Good, bad, indifferent or insulting.<br>Any review is better than no review._

_Thanks!_


End file.
